Unix and NT: Marriage made in server heaven?

Unix and Windows NT, long considered irreconcilable enemies, may actually become bosom buddies.

A number of vendors, including partners Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. and Digital Equipment Corp., plan to offer servers that permit both operating systems to run simultaneously. The vendors claim the move would allow IT managers to consolidate their servers, saving money and space, while improving manageability. Digital, a leading Unix vendor, intends to come up with some type of Unix-NT server in the next two years, said Mark Silverberg, senior marketing manager at the company's Unix systems group. Silverberg said Digital is working to integrate Unix and NT on the software and the hardware levels, but declined to elaborate. "We see the demand coming from large enterprises, more in the financial and insurance industries," Silverberg said. "They've gone from the mainframe and now they're trying to get some sort of centralized management."

There are a variety of ways to execute this strategy, Silverberg said. For instance, Digital may offer a server that has both operating systems running on the same motherboard but has each group of CPUs functioning as separate systems. Sequent also recently announced its NT-Unix integration roadmap, dubbed the Numa Center initiative, which would allow users to cluster servers in a mixed operating system environment.

The individual motherboards in the servers would be dedicated to either NT or Unix. To work together, the motherboards could have special physical wiring connections, and middleware.

Sequent plans to have some version of Numa Center out within the next year. Who really needs it? Letting NT and Unix run next to each other sounded good to one analyst, but he suggested vendors might want to make them interface. That would mean new challenges. "We have yet to see specific, tangible evidence that interoperability is there," said James Gruener, an analyst with Boston-based Aberdeen Group, Inc.

Digital: (800) 722-9332; Sequent: (800) 257-9044